Forum 2 recommended mailing lists

What is a mailing list?

An Internet mailing list is a way for groups of people with
common inerests to share information, by e-mail.
For example, Pat, Sam and Chris might all love mountain climbing,
and set up a mailing list, MOUNTAINEERING-L possibly. Now
they can each send mail to mountaineering-l@some.place with their
latest experiences, and everyone else who's connected (or subscribed
in technical terms) will receive a copy by e-mail automatically.
Mailing lists are a good way to learn more about the things you like [or
need]. They are often a better choice than Usenet newsgroups in
terms of signal-to-noise ratio. All in all, they are a Good Thing. But
it's often quite hard to handle the vast number of them, so we've gathered
our favourites, each with a small description, to share with you. Feel free
to email lists@forum2.org or the writers
of any specific minireview with questions or suggestions.

SANS is a mailing list about Internet security. The thing I like best about
it is that it is extremely lightweight, carrying only a brief description of
a topic (a newly discovered exploit, for instance) and some pointers for more
information if you need it. This way, you can stay aware of the whole picture
without too much clutter, and still find out more about the things that are relevant to you. Note, though, that
unlike many Internet mailing lists, SANS is not free. A yearly subscription of
$80 is required. SANS also organize conferences about security, and they use
the list for some very moderate self-marketing. SANS comes out eight times a
year.
Bottom line: It seems a little expensive to subscribe to this list unless
you're a computer/network security professional yourself, in which case it
looks like a nice resource. I'm pretty sure you can ask for a sample issue to
see for yourself.

Like SANS, Bugtraq is devoted to Internet security. It's very different from
SANS, though; the volume is much higher [expect around ten messages a day], the
discussion is much deeper, with some amount of noise. However, a very fast
response time -- this was THE place to stay updated about the Netscape browser
bug, for instance.
As you can probably guess, bugtraq is also slightly more of a community for
security freaks - from both side of the law ;) .

LANTRA comes from Language and Translation. It is an extremely high-volume
mailing list, yet rather amusing to anyone who can invest the time to read
it, and totaly vital to anyone who makes a living from translation. The fun
thing about this list is that it's turned into something of a community, and
an intriguing one at that. There are lots of smart people there. Note:
please read the FAQ carefully before you subscribe or post! Like any
community, especially large ones, etiquette is important.

The music and magic of words--that's what A.Word.A.Day is all about.
It is a service from the wordserver at wsmith@wordsmith.org which mails
out a vocabulary word (in English) and its definition to the subscribers
every day. You can think of it as a word trek where we explore strange
new words. Words are usually selected around a theme every week.

Yes, you are a responsible citizen of cyberspace. You don't send email
bombs, engage in sexual harassment, dig through other people's private
files, or willfully disrupt and destroy discussion groups. On the positive
side, perhaps you even take seriously the advice (not heard as often as a
few years ago!) to treat newcomers kindly, share your ideas freely for the
common good, and cultivate some sort of global consciousness, whatever that
means.

But are there concerns and responsibilities, perhaps even more urgent than
these, yet less present to mind?

Does it matter how we think about our machines, and how they affect our
style of thinking?

Does it matter whether we consciously struggle to locate that subtle,
elusive line between "the computer is responsible" and "I'm responsible"?

Does it matter how we form all those little habits that shape our
interaction with computers -- from the way we scan the words of another
human being, to the way we hammer out our own words, to the way we bow with
our attention before the unfolding pattern of screen events, to the way we
submit our senses and bodies to be trained by electronic technology?

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